What other factors should I be considering. I'm so tired of feeling lethargic! It seems like a lifelong problem... I've had my thyroid checked and it's normal. I'm not overweight and I have no other obvious problems like blood pressure, etc...

OP, I had very similar symptoms. Tried every woe, gave up coffee on two occasions (each time for a year) and nothing helped. (except giving up gluten!) If your diet is clean, you don't drink excessively and you still feel like crap: get a full hormone panel done. Something could be out of whack.

"I think the basic anti-aging diet is also the best diet for prevention and treatment of diabetes, scleroderma, and the various "connective tissue diseases." This would emphasize high protein, low unsaturated fats, low iron, and high antioxidant consumption, with a moderate or low starch consumption.

In practice, this means that a major part of the diet should be milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish, fruits and coconut oil, with vitamin E and salt as the safest supplements."

If you can't wake up without it, get headaches without it and are cranky when without it, it's a drug. It's addictive. That is so blatantly obvious. Calling it a "supplement" is a junkie trying to rationalize their habit.

No, you just pull out "science" that comes down to a study funded by Phillip Morris that shows cigs are A-OK. (Seriously, he did that on another thread. All his "research" on the subject became suspect at that point.)

Go half caf and then down to no caf is that is your goal to quite caffeine. Cold turkey isn't the easiest way but it sure can be done.

I love coffee. The whole morning routine of drinking it while everyone else is asleep. I cut out the caffeine quite a few years ago and just added it back in with my Crio Bru that I've been drinking for several months. A little caffeine for me helps with my blood pressure (it is too low).

good luck!

Age 48
Start date: 7-5-12
5'3"
121lbs
GOAL: to live to be a healthy and active 100

"In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties."
Henri Frederic Amiel

Personally am trying to keep coffee as a treat and not a daily thing - having tea in the morning and during the day at work. I feel better for it definitely. Also have stopped using any dairy as an n=1 and this is also going very well. Even with the small amount in hot drinks if I cut it out from drinks it definitely sits better in my stomach.

http://www.data-yard.net/10v2/parkinson.htm"It is not our intent to promote smoking as a protective measure against Parkinson's disease," Evan L. Thacker from Harvard School of Public Health emphasized in comments to Reuters Health. "Obviously smoking has a multitude of negative consequences. Rather, we did this study to try to encourage other scientists...to consider the possibility that neuroprotective chemicals may be present in tobacco leaves. Studies to determine if, in fact, there are neuroprotective compounds in tobacco are warranted, the researchers say. The observation that smokeless tobacco users also have a lower risk of Parkinson's disease suggests that the most likely candidates are not compounds generated by combustion, but rather constituents of the tobacco leaves."I'm all for using compounds found in tobacco in medicine. That is not the same thing as a two pack a day habit.

http://www.data-yard.net/30/asthma.htmThis one is conclusive about absolutely nothing. "There is a need for further studies with a prospective design to certify the causal direction of this association."

http://www.data-yard.net/10c/nicotine.htmAgain, about IV nicotine used to kill TB cells. Hooray. "It worked even when used in doses smaller than what's found in a single cigarette. Naser said such small quantities are not likely to cause addiction. But no one is suggesting that people with TB take up the potentially deadly habit of smoking"

http://www.data-yard.net/10b/cm.htmThis one isn't even about smoking, it's about the potential use of carbon monoxide as an emergency measure to break up blood clots. "This research is very preliminary. For all practical purposes, the gas remains a killer, so don't throw out your carbon monoxide detector just yet. (You do have a detector, don't you?)" Diggin deep there, Derp.

FORCES International - ArchiveThis one is about women with the BRCA mutation`Smoking may reduce breast cancer risk for these women, but cigarettes sharply increase the incidence of other cancers,'' said Jean-Sebastien Brunet, lead author of a study being published Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.``This study is interesting scientifically, but it should not encourage anyone to smoke,'' Some breast cancers have been linked to estrogen, the female hormone, and cigarette smoking is known to lower production of estrogen"There are better ways to lower your estrogen than giving yourself lung cancer.

http://www.data-yard.net/13/tlj.htmThis one is a preliminary report about using a nicotine patch to try to improve cognition in people with Down's syndrome and had a sample size of FIVE people. Real impressive.[/QUOTE]

Derp, if you choose to commit suicide on the installment plan by smoking, no amount of logic is going to stop you. Just don't try to pass it off as "healthy" by any stretch of the imagination. Even your "research" doesn't support it.

I think any time you let any substance rule your life (e.g. "Don't even talk to me, I haven't had my coffee yet!") I think you are giving up a piece of your independence.

Agreed.
I quit at the beginning of 2013, and I don't miss it.
The reason that I quit was because I didn't want to "have" to have it. I didn't want to have to depend on it in order to get going in the morning, or during the day.
I weaned myself off of it gradually over the course of a couple of weeks. One cup in the morning for a week, then I switched to a cup of green tea in the morning for another week before giving it up for good.
I used to have an espresso 1st thing after waking, then a big cup on the way to work, and another at morning break.

What other factors should I be considering. I'm so tired of feeling lethargic! It seems like a lifelong problem... I've had my thyroid checked and it's normal. I'm not overweight and I have no other obvious problems like blood pressure, etc...

Toxoplasmosis, genetic anomalies, and a million other things can cause this sort of lethargy.

If you can't wake up without it, get headaches without it and are cranky when without it, it's a drug. It's addictive. That is so blatantly obvious. Calling it a "supplement" is a junkie trying to rationalize their habit.

I CAN wake up without it(do everyday infact), I don't get headaches without it, nor am I 'cranky' in it's absence. I drink it perhaps once or twice a day, though went one week without it this month. Does this still mean it's a drug? Because it doesn't seem that I'm addicted to it.

Your junkie analogy helps NO-ONE, other than to be sensationalist. A habit is different from an addiction, might I add.

Now, what I have been trying to get across to the OP is that her issues probably lie elsewhere away from coffee. If she feels shit with it, by all means don't drink it. But her context is different from mine, and thus your drug and junkie analogy is actually just callous generalising, or spreading bullshit as i like to put it. Op needs to take coffee out of the equation because her health quandry has nothing to do with it.